Biography

Bilyana Petrova is a political scientist specializing in political economy. Her research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations, with a regional focus on Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the OECD area.
Bilyana's work examines the determinants of economic inequality and redistribution in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the causes and consequences of the rise of the financial sector in advanced industrial democracies, and the factors that affect individual attitudes toward democracy and redistribution in post-communist countries. She is also interested in the implications of tax havens for economic inequality and in the consequences of poor governance for socioeconomic outcomes.
During her year at the EUI, Bilyana will work on a book manuscript exploring the impact of structural economic transformations and economic policy choices on market income inequality in Eastern Europe and Latin America. More specifically, the project traces how deindustrialization, the expansion of the services sector, and specialization in the production of commodities have affected the income distribution in these two regions as well as how governments have shaped these effects through their policy choices.
Bilyana received her BA in Economics, International Studies, and Latin American and Iberian Studies from the University of Richmond (2012) and her PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2018). In addition, she has studied and conducted fieldwork in Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, and Peru.